


ultra greens

by nasa



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Angst, M/M, Paralysis, Recovery, Self-Hatred, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 02:12:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9152977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa
Summary: The doctors say it's a miracle.Lying in bed, legs like solid rocks beneath him, Finn finds he disagrees.-In which bacta gel does not magically heal Finn's spine - recovery takes work.





	

The doctors say it’s a miracle.

_Should have died, honestly - might still get some feeling or movement back in your legs - long process, yes, but progress is possible - really, Finn, this is quite miraculous._

Lying in bed, legs like solid rocks beneath him, Finn finds he disagrees.

-

Poe is there when Finn wakes up.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, everything’s okay,” is the first thing he hears as he comes to in a sterile room, droids whirring around him, machines beeping, everything loud. “Rey’s fine, she’s just not here right now. The mission was a success.”

Finn feels like his heart is beating out of his chest. It thuds hard against his ribcage, taking up room that’s meant for his lungs. Poe’s eyes are soft, and so are his hands against Finn’s.

“How long?” Finn manages, voice so weak it's almost a whisper.

“You’ve been asleep for eleven days. Don't worry though, you're right on schedule."

Finn tries to breathe deep, but he can't quite force the air into his lungs. "Rey -"

"Rey's going to be gone for a while - a few months, at least." Poe leans close, lowering his voice. "She’s - well, she's getting trained by Luke, which is insane, right? But don’t worry about her, okay? Everything is gonna be fine.”

Finn wants to ask more, but he thinks one of the medbots may have injected something into his IV bag, because he’s already drifting off again. Maybe he’s just exhausted. He opens his mouth to say something to Poe - thank you, maybe, or maybe he’s going to ask how he is - but he falls asleep, mouth gaping, before he can say anything.

-

(If Finn had been awake, he would have seen Poe’s wide smile as he drifted off, his laugh, the way his eyes twinkled when he high-rived BB-8, the robot’s happy chirping.

But he wasn’t.)

-

The next time Finn wakes up, Poe is out on a training exercise, and the doctors are there. They tell him he’ll probably never walk again.

Finn doesn’t like to think about that time.

-

Finn doesn't know many people, really, and those he does know are busy or off chasing Luke Skywalker, so he spends most of his time alone. Those first few weeks of waking, he drifts in and out of consciousness, waiting for something he can't quite identify. Occasionally, BB-8 visits and whirrs around beeping unintelligibly, and sometimes the General will stop by with a smile and an update on current events. And then, of course, there is Poe.

The first time Poe comes by after Finn has awoken - well and truly awoken, returned to the land of lucidity and pain from refusing the mind-fogging painkillers - he brings a bar of chocolate that he presses into Finn's hand, folding his fingers over the paper wrapper.

"Have you ever had chocolate before?" he asks, and when Finn shakes his head, he grins. "Let me tell you, you're gonna love it. It's good stuff, too, recovery chocolate, we save it specifically to take the sting out of healing."

Finn looks down at the bar in his hand. The packaging is purple, and decorated with little flowers in the corners. "Thank you," he says, "but shouldn't you be saving this?" Poe frowns at him. "For yourself?"

"Hey," Poe chides him, looking genuinely upset, "no, of course not. You're the one who got hurt saving the galaxy."

 _Saving the galaxy,_ Finn thinks, looking down at the carefully wrapped candy in his hands. That sounds like something a hero would do, sounds like something - better, than Finn, beyond him. Poe must just be confused - confused and grateful, maybe, with nowhere to place his gratitude. Finn doesn't say that, though, because he doesn't want Poe to frown anymore. Instead, he rubs his thumb over the chocolate wrapping.

Poe follows his gaze. "Wanna try it?" he asks. "It's better the sooner you eat it, chocolate can get kinda stale if you keep it around for too long. One time, Oddy kept a chocolate ball for a whole year, because it was fancy stuff, you know, something special, and he kept saying he was saving it, but oh man, you should've  _seen_ this thing after a year in his musty bunk -"

And so Poe tells Finn stories about his normal life and normal friends, and Finn lets chocolate melt cloyingly sweet and rich on his tongue, as Poe's voice echoes through a room suddenly less cold.

-

When Stormtroopers are injured, they don’t go to hospitals. There’s no recuperation program for wounded soldiers, no such thing as prosthetics for missing limbs, no need for wheelchairs or crutches. If you are injured, you are killed. There is not ‘recovering’, only alive, dead, and dying. 

Finn saw it once. Not personally - his first Battle was the one where FN-2003 died, the one where he decided to defect - but his mentor. Instructor QZ-8097 was one of the commanders of the FN-2 battalion. One day, she went into battle perfectly whole, and that afternoon returned with a bullet wound and a missing limb. She was taken into the hospital wing and never seen again.

-

Rey video-calls Finn a week and a half after he wakes up, just as he's drifting off to an early sleep. He jolts up when he hears the tablet start buzzing, and fumbles with it until her grinning face appears on its blank surface.

"Finn!" she calls enthusiastically, like he's across a room instead of across the galaxy. Her cheeks are pink like she just finished some physical activity, but she's in a dark room, almost cavelike, that looks damp around the walls. Finn can hear the murmur of ocean waves in the background. He imagines he can smell salt.

“How are you?” he asks her, and she beams as she tells him about combat practice with Luke, running laps around the island and reading about the Force. 

“He won’t let me practice it too much, yet,” she says, “but I think he will, soon. He’s - tentative. I think he’s afraid I’ll turn out like Kylo Ren. I think he worries its his fault.”

Finn hums and shifts in his bed. The sheets are dry and rough against his skin; the room smells like antiseptic. So different from where Rey is, he thinks. He loves Rey, and he knows she deserves this, so he doesn’t want to be jealous. He tries not to be. It’s hard.

“Anyway,” Rey says, taking his pause as a cue to change the topic. “Enough about me. What’s going on there?”

Finn manages to bluster on for a couple minutes about BB-8 and Poe, and how the Resistance is building back its army. Rey, laughing, finally manages to interrupt him halfway through a story Poe had told him about BB-8 stealing an X-wing part from Jessika. “That sounds lovely, Finn, but how are  _you?”_

Finn makes a face he hopes comes across as nonchalant. It feels more like a grimace. “Oh, you know,” he says. “Blundering onwards. The hard life of a vacationer, that’s the life I lead.”

Rey smiles but Finn notices the crinkles around her eyes have smoothed out a bit. “How’s your back?”

Finn brushes it off. “Fine, fine.” Rey doesn’t look convinced, so Finn fakes a wide smile, tries to make it look as sincere as possible. He tries to channel Poe. “Really, I’m doing great. Just meeting up with a few people for lunch in a few minutes, actually.” It’s a lie, a bald-faced lie, but Rey doesn’t need to know that. “I better get going.”

“Alright,” Rey says, a quirk of concern to her expression that Finn doesn’t really want to consider further. “Tell everyone I’m thinking about them okay? And everything’s good here. And send my love to BB-8!”

Finn cracks a smile. “Will do,” he says. When he hangs up, he tosses his datareader onto the bedside table next to him, sinking back into the pillows on his bed.

He doesn’t go to lunch.

-

Unlike the General, who drops by Finn’s hospital room rarely and randomly, or BB-8, who never stays for more than ten minutes of chattering with the med-bots, Poe comes to visit Finn regularly and often, for long stretches at a time. Three days a week: two and a half hours on Sunday afternoons, four on Wednesday and three on Friday, unofficial appointments which he arrives to, precisely on time, without fail.

Sometimes he brings a game to play. Sometimes he brings a datareader, or a book or newspaper, to read to Finn aloud. Other times he just comes to sit and talk, about his past or about the Resistance or about anything Finn wants to, until his eyelids start to droop and he falls asleep mid-sentence.

One Friday, Poe shows up at 18:00 on the dot, holding a deck of cards and a pizza.

“Does the First Order have pizza?” Poe asks, almost as an afterthought, as he settles back in his chair.

Finn folds his slice in half and takes a big bite, holding a paper plate under his chin to catch the falling bits of cheese and meat. “Occasionally,” he says around his mouthful of food. He chews and swallows. “Usually after battles.”

Poe raises his eyebrow. “What, like as a celebration?” He sounds amused.

Finn shrugs, takes another bite. “Nah,” he says. “I think it was more a convenience thing. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s high in carbohydrates, especially if you don’t add meat to it, which they never did.” He takes another bite, looks down at the pizza. “What did you say this was called again?”

“Pepperoni,” Poe says, taking a bite of his own piece. Finn hums. Poe’s leaning back in his chair, feet kicked up on Finn’s bed, so they rest next to Finn’s shoulder. Finn finds he really doesn’t mind.

“So what are we going to play with those?” Finn asks, nodding towards the cards. Poe teaches him a game called War - simplistic, really, overtly simplistic ( _too simplistic to be called war_ , Finn thinks but doesn’t say) but they play for hours, late into the night, Poe laughing and open and cast in a faintly orange glow by the lampshades, brightening everything he touches.

 _It’s more about luck than anything,_ Finn thinks later, as he watches Poe collect the deck, the pizza box, the paper plates.  _But, really, isn’t everything?_

-

(Tuesday afternoons are the worst, for Finn. That’s when it’s been two days since he’s seen Poe, but still a whole day until he can see him again. That’s when he’s been the longest without human contact - and after years and years of being a Stormtrooper, maybe that shouldn’t gut him so much, being around droids all the time, but. It does.

Tuesday nights are when his physical therapy appointments are, too, and they’re not with a human, either. They’re with a robot, a sadistic droid which seems to enjoy mechanically contorting him into awkward angles and unusual poses, like he’s some type of machine, too.

 _Stretch farther, Mr. Finn,_ it says - it constantly says, always asking him to go farther, go faster, go stronger, be  _better,_ and Finn wants to tell him that he’s trying. Finn wants to tell him not to bother. Finn wants to ask why it even does this, why physical therapy is even a thing, because it’s not like Finn is ever going to walk again, anyway. And what use is a soldier that can’t use his legs?

Finn wants to ask, but he doesn’t. What’s the point, anyway?)

-

“Ice cream?”

Finn shakes his head.

“Berries?”

No again. Poe frowns - a little sad thing like  _you poor deprived soul -_ and jots something down on his datareader. They’re making a list: all the things Finn needs to do or eat or try that he hasn’t done or eaten or tried before. They’re less than a quarter of the way down the document, and it’s already intimidatingly long.

“Tea?”

No.

“Crab?”

No.

“Bananas?”

Finn’s got his mouth open to say no when he realizes - oh, oh  _yeah_ , he  _has_ had bananas, hasn’t he? And he nods, suddenly bolstered by this knowledge.

“Awesome! Do you like them?” Poe asks, and Finn nods again.  _Bananas,_ he thinks, silky soft on your tongue, tooth-achingly sweet.

“Okay, cool, bananas on the  _yes_ list, then. Okay, next one: bagels?”

And they go on like this, name after name after name, most unrecognizable to Finn. Many he’s not even sure are foods - some might be games, or experiences, or places, but he’s never heard of them, so he shakes his head no to almost every one, his perpetual negativity only occasionally interrupted by a spot of excitement.

As they go, Finn feels more and more overwhelmed. There’s just such a great  _variety_ of things in the galaxy. So many different options, so many different things with so many difference uses, and it’s like Finn’s been transported into another place, somewhere with chocolate and wet green leaves and retirees. Finally, Poe starts asking about something called  _mangosteen -_ a fruit, like the mango, but unrelated to it - and Finn has to tap out.

“Okay, can we - can we take a break, maybe?” Finn asks, and Poe nods immediately, no hesitation.

“Yeah, of course, buddy, whatever you want,” Poe says, setting the datareader down on Finn’s beside table. “I shouldn’t have pushed it, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault. It’s - nice, that you want to help, acclimate me, you know, help me figure out how to fit in. It’s just - you know, a lot, sometimes.”  _Sometimes I wake up and think I’m back there, back on base; sometimes I wake up and wondering if I’m drowning; or I can swear I feel sand digging into the skin of my legs, and I’m in the sinking pits, and you’re dead, and I’m dying._

“Of course, buddy,” Poe says, and reaches out to clasp Finn’s hand briefly. “We can come back to this whenever you want, or never if you don’t want to. But, I mean, I think you’ll find some of this stuff cool, when you’re no so overwhelmed. There are a lot of great things in the galaxy that have been unfairly kept from you, and now you have the opportunity to see them. It’s - I think it’ll make you happy. More than you realize.”

“Thanks,” he says finally. “I look - I look forward to it.”

Poe nods, and smiles at him, warm. The moment stretches, and Finn finds himself thinking,  _I like the way he looks in this light._

Then Poe’s pushing himself up from the side of the bed, and the moment snaps.

“Unfortunately, I’ve got to be going now, anyway,” he says, and Finn feels a pang somewhere in his stomach. “Training, you know, new pilots and all that jazz. But I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Finn nods, trying not to look too tense. “Okay,” he repeats, and Poe beams, heads for the door.

“Oh, and Finn?” Poe says, pausing in the doorway. Finn looks up from his hands. “You already do fit in here,” Poe says, and then he’s gone, an orange flash around the doorframe shutting back to cold monochrome.

And Finn - thinks about that, seriously considers it, because it’s Poe, and Poe wouldn’t lie to him on purpose. Not that Finn knows about, anyway. But the more he considers it, the wronger it seems. Finn barely knows anyone on base; his best friend is gone on a scavenger hunt for a long lost Jedi; and those people that do know him see him as a former Stormtrooper, nothing more - someone to watch and be wary of, not someone to let watch your back, guard your home.

 _It’s a nice sentiment,_ Finn thinks, settling back against his pillows.  _But unfortunately deluded._

 _It’s fine,_ he tells himself.  _I don’t need to fit in anyway._ Not like it’s going to last.

-

(You are a Stormtrooper. You do not cry, you do not cringe, you do not flinch; you are a soldier. You do not deserve the privilege of fear. For you, there is only this: the cool inside of your helmet, the way the pads of your fingers stick inside your gloves, the burn of your thighs after a hard run. You are a Stormtrooper.

You do not get to be anything else.)

**-**

The next time Rey contacts him, it’s not through a call, but a letter. She apologizes for it in the first paragraph -  _sometimes it’s just difficult to find the time to do a video transmission,_ she says, which Finn hears as  _sometimes it’s hard to find time for you._ In some ways, it’s better, because it means Finn has more time to think up appropriate responses. In most ways, it’s worse, because Finn doesn’t get to see Rey as much, doesn’t get to hear her or her laugh - but everything requires a sacrifice, and it is what it is.

_Dear Finn,_

_Sorry I had to write, sometimes it’s just difficult to find the time to do a video transmission. Training with Luke is going well. I wish you could see the ocean here - I know I say that every time but I mean it. Luke is seeming very enthusiastic, which is good._

_I miss you guys. It’s lovely, of course, getting Jedi training, learning to use the force, but it can get lonely out here with just us. Chewie left last week - some sort of supply run, I think, or maybe he just needed to get away - but the planet feels very constricting without him and the Falcon. I miss people. People are better than no people._

_You must tell me all about what’s happening on base. How is Poe? Have you heard anything about the General’s plans going forward? Anything else going on the galaxy? I look forward to hearing from you, Finn! Make sure to get back to me soon!_

_Gotta go, Luke needs me for training. Call soon!_

_Your friend,_

_Rey_

Finn writes her back, of course he does. Or he tries to. He starts each one,  _Hey, Rey,_ and it feels awkward, wrong, stale. He tries,  _Dear Rey,_ but that feels strange too, somehow, unsettling in a way he can’t identify; he writes a dozen letter, and discards each of them in turn, with a clink and a mechanical crumple in his datareader’s trash can. More time to think is more time to overthink. He writes,  _I miss you,_ and then wonders if it sounds too needy, if it sounds like he’s just saying it because Rey said it. He writes,  _things are good here,_ and wonders if it’s too vague, if it sounds sincere. He can never tell, with the things he writes. He lies to himself too much. 

Eventually he just scraps it entirely.  _I’ll just wait until she calls,_ Finn thinks.  _Yeah, that’ll work. I’ll just wait._

-

Poe comes, and Poe comes, and Poe comes. He is the only constant in Finn’s life that Finn feels he can grasp onto. Something clean, something pure, something that doesn’t make Finn’s heart clench up in his chest, doesn’t make him think,  _maybe it’ll stop. Maybe it’ll stop._ If he does make Finn’s heart clench up in his chest, it’s for a reason entirely unrelated to guilt and pain and loss. Because Finn has been alone for years, and here he is. Here’s a person. Here’s Poe.

Poe. Poe with his wide eyes and friendly smiles. Poe and his weekdays, Poe and his presence like warm. Poe and ice cream and Jenga and laughter. Poe and dragonfruit and comic strips and laughter. Poe and apple pie and romance holovids that Poe calls  _ridiculous_ and cries at the end of, and laughter.

Everything laughter. Always laughter. The things come and go - amazing things, beautiful things, delicious things, every single one of them opening a slightly new corner of the world to Finn, each one saying,  _sorry you haven’t seen this yet, sorry this was taken from you, but here it is now,_ each one of them sunny - but Poe and the laughter, these are steady. Poe, with his dark hair that curls at the base of his spine, Poe with his big hands and steady touch, Poe with his low eyes, piercing gaze. Poe. Even his name sounds like something beautiful, a steady note in a melody, a smooth stone to hold onto. Poe and his laughter.

(Finn catches himself, sometimes, thinking impossible things; thinking,  _we must really be friends - are we friends?_ Thinking,  _what would it be like to be more than Poe Dameron’s friend?_ Thinking,  _if only I were normal.)_

_-_

(Therapy feels less like therapy and more like penance. Every day the same cycle, like laps around the track, every day the same lack of progress, the same disappointed tone in the robots modulated voice.

 _Stretch farther, Mr. Finn,_ it tells him, and Finn thinks,  _I’m trying, can’t you see I’m trying?_

 _One more exercise, Mr. Finn,_ it tells him, once, twice, four times, and Finn snaps, growls, pushes himself back.

“I’m done here,” he says, and the robot beeps sadly, but Finn has no room for pity. “I said I’m  _done,”_ he says, but he can’t move without the robot’s help, and so they’re left there, at a stand-off, both, in some ways, refusing to move, both, in some ways, unable to: Finn with his broken spine and broken lines and broken  _self,_ the med-bot, with it’s looped programming, the broken instructions,  _do not let your patients quit._

 _Just one more stretch,_ it says,  _just a bit farther,_ and Finn thinks, and thinks, and tries not to cry at the futility of it all.)

**-**

Four weeks after he wakes up, Jessika comes to visit him. Finn has never met her; he’s only heard stories from Poe. Plenty of stories, though. When she comes in, he recognizes her immediately, before she even introduces herself.

“Jessika,” Finn says, and smiles wide, although he’s not sure that he means it. “Did Poe put you up to this?”

Jessika laughs and shakes her head. “So he’s told you about me, then?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer before coming up to him, hand outstretched. He shakes it. Her grip is firm. “It’s nice to finally meet the hero of this whole ordeal.”

Finn chuckles a bit, and smiles a bit. It’s fake. “Now I know Poe put you up to this.”

She laughs, too, perching on the bottom of his bed. “Actually, Poe would probably kill me if he knew I was here. It’s - he usually doesn’t make a big fuss, but it’s his birthday next week. And it’s been a trying year for all of us, but especially for him, so we’re having a celebration in his quarters next Wednesday.”

Finn’s heart sinks. Wednesday. He’ll have to go four days without seeing Poe next week.

“Well, thank you for letting me know,” he says sincerely. She cocks her head at him and laughs, somewhat awkwardly.

“No I - I’m inviting you. Poe’d love to have you there, I know, he certainly spends enough time up here.”

For a split second, Finn has absolutely no idea what to say. He’s never been invited to a party, before. Then that split second passes, and he still doesn’t really know what to say but he’s suddenly thinking of slings and casts and wheelchairs, he’d have to be put in a wheelchair - he doesn’t want to do that.

But -  _Poe’d love to have you there._

“Uh. Um, I’ll consider it? I might have physio that day -“ he doesn’t have physio that day, “but, I mean, I’ll let you know?”

Jessika nods, a flicker of disappointment crossing her face.  _Just disappointment for Poe,_ Finn reminds himself, but its still nice, the idea that Poe would be disappointed if he wasn’t there. It makes something warm twist in his gut.

“Well, just know that we would love to have you,” she says, then adds, “Poe and the rest of us. As much as Poe talks about you, everyone’s interested.”

Finn wonders what that means - interested in him, Finn the person, or interested in him, Finn the former Stormtrooper, newly crippled? 

He smiles faintly. “That’s nice to hear.”

Jessika hangs around for a few more minutes - babbling about this thing or another, clearly trying to start some sort of conversation, or at least make it seem like she made an effort. Finn appreciates it. It’s a nice human ritual that none of the robots ever bother with. But he’s tired, and he barely knows her, and he doesn’t miss the way her eyes keep flicking to the two long lumps under the blanket which are his legs (his useless, useless legs). Finn wishes he’d asked for a thicker blanket.

“Well, I gotta get going,” Jessika finally says, rising from the bed. She juts her thumb towards the door and makes an apologetic expression. “Training, and all, you know.”

Finn hums, although he doesn’t know. The only training he knows is the rigorous, harsh routine that goes into making a Stormtrooper, the inhumanity of it, the isolation. “Have a nice time! Flying, I mean.”

Jessika cracks a smile that seems genuine. “I will. Don’t forget to let me know about that party!”

Finn nods and waves as she leaves the room. He watches her through the window on his door as she heads off down the long hallway. He waits until she turns a corner until she slumps.

“Fuck,” he says. The droid next to him beeps, scandalized, but Finn doesn’t even have it in him to laugh.

**-**

(Sometimes Finn dreams of running. Sometimes he dreams of flying. Sometimes he doesn’t dream at all. When he can’t sleep, he sits in his bed and watches the night crew scurry outside the window.

One night, the pilots get back in late - slow reconnaissance mission, Finn imagines, although he and Poe never discuss it - and Finn lays his head against the cooling window pane, watching Poe climb out of his X-wing, examining its surface and resupplying its fuel tank before wandering off with BB-8.

 _You can’t do that,_ Finn thinks, and turns away, shuts the curtains, tries to fall asleep.)

-

That Thursday, Poe shows up unannounced, off schedule, at noon. Finn’s halfway through eating lunch when Poe knocks on his door.

“Come in!” he calls around a mouthful of rice, and then Poe’s there, uncharacteristically tentative in his doorway.

“Hey, um - I can leave if you want me to, but I had some unscheduled off-time and wondered if maybe…?”

“Of course,” Finn says. The surprise makes his voice crack. “I mean - the chair’s gone, I think the physio might have taken it, but -“ He shifts over on his bed, dragging his pillow out of the way. His limp legs follow him. “Have a seat.”

Poe perches, cross-legged, at the bottom of Finn’s bed. “Thanks, man. I don’t have food today - figured you’d already have that -“ He raises his eyebrows at the bowl of rice Finn is clutching so close to his chest - “But I brought some desert. Have you ever had pastel de banano? Probably not, right?”

Finn stuffs a spoonful of rice into his mouth, shaking his head.

“Right well its a traditional desert where I’m from. It’s sort of like banana bread? Which I guess you haven’t had either, but basically it’s like flour and sugar and bananas made into a kind of cake. It’s really good, anyway.”

Finn leans closer to inspect the plastic bag Poe holds out. It’s dense, medium brown on the outside with what looks like caramelized bananas on the top. 

“Where did you get this?” Finn asks, and Poe glances down at his hands for a second before he looks back up at Finn. He’s not blushing, Finn notes, but he’s close.

“My abuela sent it to me a couple days ago,” he says. Finn waits for him to mention his birthday - hadn’t Jessika said something about birthday cake? Birthday presents? maybe that’s what this was - but he doesn’t.

“I want to try it,” Finn declares. It seems sudden, into the silence, as he abandons his rice bowl on the table beside him with a clatter, and pulls open the plastic bag. A thick, sweet smell spills out. “Oh my god,” he says, before he’s even broken a piece off. “I am so going to like this.” He takes a small corner - one with banana on it - and places it delicately into his mouth. “Oh my  _god.”_ His eyes slide shut.

“Good, right?” Poe’s voice sounds a little higher pitched than normal.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I never want to eat anything else in my whole life.”

Poe laughs and the sound lights up the room. “Well, don’t worry, there’s plenty.” He shuffles on the bed for a second, and Finn thinks he’s going to pull more out of somewhere - where he doesn’t know, a back pocket? - but he just pulls out a tablet. “And I have a game on this that I think you’ll like.”

They spend the whole afternoon like that, making a mess of Finn’s bed with the crumbs and shouting at each other over the game on Poe’s tablet.

It’s the best Thursday Finn’s ever had.

-

(Finn tells Poe once,  _you don't have to do this._ Poe just frowns at him, and asks,  _do what?)_

**-**

A few days after Finn had woken up - a doctor had asked him if he wanted a wheelchair. This was while he was still classified as ‘critical’, before he was handed off completely to the droids. Finn had immediately recoiled at the thought, shaking his head vigorously. 

 _Are you sure?_ The woman had asked, eyes kind and voice careful. It felt a lot like pity.  _You’re going to be bed-bound for a while if you don’t get a chair. I’m not saying you’re never going to walk again, because there is a chance, but it’s going to be a long road, and -_

Finn didn’t even hear her out fully. Getting into a wheelchair would just be like confirming that he was useless.  _Hi, I’m Finn, a former Stormtrooper who can no longer walk. Ready to decommission me yet?_

It’s not that he thinks everyone in wheelchairs are useless. That would be ridiculous. There are plenty of amazing people who could never walk or who were no longer able to walk. But the thing is, Finn’s worth has always been built off of his physical strengths. Emotions mean nothing. Intellectual ability mean nothing - unless it means the ability to circumvent a control panel. And Finn’s not good at that. He was assigned to  _sanitation,_ for godssake. He’s a body designed to do labor, nothing more.

So, yeah. He doesn’t like the idea of wheelchairs.

The day after Poe visits him on a Thursday afternoon, two days after Jessika comes to ask him about Poe’s party, he asks the droid for one.

-

(The thing is, late at night, sometimes Finn thinks:  _I didn’t care. This heroic act you think I did, it wasn’t heroic - I didn’t actually care about whether or not he survived. I just wanted to get out. I just wanted to live. I didn’t care about the human cost. I cared about myself._

And isn’t that horrible? Doesn’t that make everything so much worse?)

**-**

On Poe’s birthday, Jessika comes to pick him up.

“Hey!” she says, clearly trying to sound enthusiastic. Her cheeks are pink - with excitement, maybe, or adrenaline - but she’s treating him with a tentativeness she hadn’t, last time. Finn wonders if he scared her off.

“Hey,” he says, and does his best to sound warm. Jessika’s posture softens, slightly. 

“Do you need help?” she asks, gesturing to the chair beside his bed.

“Nah, it’s fine, I got it.” Finn swings his legs over the side of his bed, which has been lowered to the height of the chair, and pulls his torso into it the way his therapist droid showed him the day before, in physio. Then he pulls each of his legs into the chair, one at a time. The whole time, he’s hyperaware of Jessika’s eyes on him, as she stares while obviously trying  _not_ to stare. It makes it even more obvious how this routine makes his legs seem like deadweights, how it makes him look so useless.

“Ready?” Finn asks after a long moment where Jessika, seemingly caught up, just stares at his motionless legs. She jerks out of it, then, flushing scarlet and murmuring apologies as she moves to the back of his chair to push him.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Finn says again, rolling himself forward. “I got it.”

His fingers are raw and probably getting calluses by the time they make it down to Poe’s room, but its worth it, for the way he gets to roll in unaided (aside from Jessika’s assistance in holding open the door).

The room is half-full when he gets there, and he’s greeting with surprisingly loud and genuine happiness. He assumes most of it is for Jessika. Poe isn’t there yet, but BB-8, is, and he rolls up right beside Finn when he positions himself in the corner, by the end of Poe’s bunk.

“Hey bud,” Finn says, reaching out to pat BB-8’s head. It lets out a beep that Finn thinks sounds happy. “I guess we match, now, huh?”

BB-8 beeps in what seems like an affirmative and bumps up against his tire a couple of times before zooming off to the other side of the room. Finn sighs a bit, leaning back in his seat. 

“Hey, are you -“

As soon as Finn realizes the girl - in her twenties, probably, with dark eyes and hair puffed out in an afro - is speaking to him, everyone is being shushed by Jessika, who stands on the table in the middle of the room.

“Everyone  _shut the fuck up, he’s coming.”_ It comes out a hiss, but it does the job and everyone quiets quickly. Someone turns the lights off, and the room is cast into darkness. Suddenly Finn can hear the footsteps in the hallway - two pairs of them, and voices which start out indistinct but which become clearer as the footsteps get louder. 

“ - hope this doesn’t take too long, I’ve got somewhere to be in half an hour.”

“Oh, lighten up, will you, please, it’s your birthday.”

“I know, I just -“

And then the door is opening, and the lights get flicked on, and everyone is screaming “ _Surprise!”_ apparently as loudly as they can (is that a thing that people do on birthdays, scream at the birthday person?) and Finn just catches a glimpse of Poe’s shocked but delighted expression before he’s overwhelmed with a sea of people rushing at him.

Finn feels a pang of jealousy.  _I want to be rushing at him._ He swallows it down.

When Finn glances back at his side, the girl who was there is gone. Probably got swallowed up by the crowd, Finn thinks, or went to go congratulate Poe on being another year older. Finn settles back into his chair. It’ll be plenty long until he can penetrate the mob surrounding Poe, so he might as well people-watch in the process. He likes people-watching. He was never able to do it with the First Order - Stormtroopers all look and act the same, from a distance, aside from the fact some of them are commanders and some of them are males and some of them are females - and it’s a fun thing to do. A new pastime. 

It takes a solid twenty minutes before the crowd begins to thin. In that time, a few people come up to Finn and try to strike a conversation, but it largely fails. They seem to be expecting something out of him, anyway, some sort of happy-go-lucky hero that he can’t deliver. Everyone who comes to speak to him walks away disappointed and so Finn just shrinks back into his corner a bit more, hopes people get the signal to leave him be.

Finally, Poe clears his throat, extracting himself from the mob. “You guys, this is really sweet - I mean, really, this is so nice - but there’s something I have to do, like, a previous appointment I just need to go really quick -“

Jessika is sitting on a chair by Finn and she rolls her eyes, getting onto her feet and back onto the table. “Oi!” she says, not quite shouting but loudly enough to get Poe’s attention over the dim clamor of protests from partygoers. “I’m not an idiot.” And she points at Finn, like a gigantic glowing sign practically screaming his presence to the entire room.

Finn kind of wants to melt into the ground. For a long moment, there is silence; Finn knows everyone who hasn’t spotted him before is absorbing his presence now, and everyone else is watching Poe, or Jessika, for their reactions.

Then Poe breaks out into the widest smile Finn’s ever seen him where. His lips form the word ‘ _Finn’_ but, across the room, Finn can’t hear him. He jerks his head in a sort of incredibly awkward ‘hello’ gesture, and thinks that might be the end of it, but then Poe is pushing his way through the crowd (which actually parts rather easily before him) and saying it again - “Finn” in a quiet, almost shocked tone. And then he’s leaning down and hugging him. 

He feels warm and soft, and smells like leather and pineapples. Finn’s arms are tight around Poe’s waist. “Hey, Poe,” he says, voice quiet.

“I can’t believe you came,” Poe murmurs into his shoulder, and then he’s - regrettably, unfortunately - pulling back. He leaves a hand on Finn’s shoulder, the other coming up to shuffle through his own hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about this, I didn’t know -“

“That’s kind of the point of a surprise, Poe,” Finn interrupts him, lips twitching, and Poe laughs, a little self-deprecatingly.

“Yeah, I suppose, I just didn’t want you to think I forgot you.”

Finn smiles, and finds its genuine. “No worries, man.” For a long moment, he and Poe stare at each other, and then someone coughs to Finn’s right and the dark-haired girl from before is there, hands in her pockets awkwardly.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but um, Poe, maybe you want to introduce us to Finn?”

Poe blushes, abruptly scarlet. It’s satisfying, until Finn realizes his cheeks have grown hot; he’s blushing too. “Right,” Poe says, glancing around, like he’s trying to find a place to start, “Right um, well - this!” He gestures with one hand to the dark-haired girl. “This is Emily, she’s one of my pilots. One of the best, really -“

“I blush,” Emily says, deadpan, and there are a few snickers from the crowd around them. There’s quite a crowd, Finn realizes. Quite a  _large_ crowd. And they’re all looking at him. He has to resist the urge to squirm in his seat as his stomach swoops, and his face grows just a little bit hotter.

“Right, and, um - god, it’s going to be a problem to introduce you to everyone, right now.” Finn wonders if Poe realizes that on his own or if he can read how overwhelmed Finn is on his face. “How about for now, this is Finn?” Finn glances around at the crowd, smiling, but it feels too tight. There are a lot of people looking at his wheelchair, right now. “And I guess whenever you guys get a chance to talk to us then I’ll introduce you because - Finn, do you know any of these guys?”

Finn swallows, and has to clear his throat twice before he manages, “Just Jessika. And Emily, now, I suppose.”

Poe nods, as if he was expecting that, and turns back to the crowd. “Right, well, you guys mingle and I suppose give Finn - and I -“ It sounds like an afterthought - “Some space, yeah? Everyone will get a chance to meet him by the time the nights out, I’m sure.”

It certainly feels like it. They cycle through what feels like an entire battalion of people: pilots and fighters and mechanics and everyone in between. Poe doesn’t leave Finn’s side for the whole night, always hovering to his right, more often than not with a hand on Finn’s shoulder. It’s a reassuring weight, especially as the waves and waves of strangers keep coming.

And Finn’s never had anything against strangers. He’s always loved meeting new people; it’s part of what made him so ill-suited to being a Stormtrooper and what made him latch on to Rey and BB-8 so quickly. But tonight, sitting here under the hot lights and the hot stares of Poe’s friends, Poe’s family, Poe’s life, Finn feels out of place. He feels kind of like an animal in an exhibit,  _Former Stormtrooper, now disabled, to be used for scientific research._

Finn makes it three hours before he finally calls it quits. He only makes it that long because of the wide smile on Poe’s face, his fingernails digging into his t-shirt - and he feels bad that, when he beckons Poe down to tell him he’s leaving, Poe’s smile flickers. But he seems understanding enough.

“Of course, get your rest,” he says, returning to his full stature, and removing his hand from Finn’s shoulder. Suddenly, Finn feels cold. “I’ll see you on Friday, okay?”

Finn nods and starts to roll himself to the door. He gets caught up, a bit, leaving - a few people want to say goodbye, and a few people want to introduce themselves, but he manages to extract himself quickly enough.

In the doorway, he pauses for just a moment, glancing back into Poe’s quarters. It’s very bright inside. Everyone is laughing and Poe’s got his arm around Emily’s shoulder, now, her own arm settled against his waist. Finn’s chest feels tight, but Poe is laughing, free, with a drink in his hand.

Finn thinks of the way Poe had hugged him - the shocked  _Finn,_ the warmth - and it loosens the knot in his chest somewhat. But it’s short lived: he rolls himself away, and they’re all staring, his wheelchair, his legs, his crippled, broken body. He tries to ignore it.

(He fails.)

-

(Finn had a dream, once, where he found QZ-8097’s grave. It’s a stupid, unrealistic thing - Stormtroopers aren’t graced with graves, they’re thrown into the incinerator, the recyclable organic matter re-used in cloning, the waste products ejected into empty space - but it felt very real, all the same. He hadn’t realized he was dreaming.

Her gravestone had been dry and crumbly at the touch. It didn’t have QZ-8097 written on it; it said Marisa. Finn knew it belonged to QZ-8097 all the same. He had knelt in front of it, damp earth soaking the knees of his jeans, and stroked the surface of it, repetitive, on autopilot, watching it fall apart. He brushed her name and watched the  _M_ fall, brushed the corner and watched it crack. Finally, he was left with nothing: a pile of stone and the vast light of the galaxy stretching out beyond the earth. And he wasn’t even on earth anymore. He was floating through space, spread-eagled, akimbo, exhausted, drifting.

He fell asleep among the stars, and woke back up in bed.)

-

(He can’t remember if he had the dream before or after he left the Stormtroopers.)

-

Six weeks after Finn wakes up, he gets a new physical therapist. She’s human, this time, or humanoid - definitely not a droid. The first thing she has Finn do is try to stand up.

“Um,” Finn says. “Did they not tell you I was paralyzed?”

The doctor considers him, head tilted just slightly. She has very green hair. “No, they told me, and I think they fully believe that. I just wasn’t sure if you did, too.”

Finn has to hold back a snort. As it is his face contorts into a sort of annoyed grimace. “Spinal injuries aren’t about belief, are they? You’re a doctor, you should know that.”

“They’re not just about belief. But belief is a part of it.” She turns to her desk in the corner, away from him, and flips through a few papers. Finn wonders if she’s going to refuse to treat him. Maybe it’d be a good thing.

“Okay,” she finally sighs, turning towards him and tossing the clipboard down onto the desk. “Time for your stretches.”

Finn does them all, and when she tells him to do it faster, he obeys her. Or tries to. Unlike the droid, she deviates a bit from the prescribed treatment, lengthening some stretches and shortening others. A couple she eliminates entirely.

The last stretch has Finn shaking and unsteady -  _just like always,_ he thinks, bitterly,  _just like forever_ \- and in its last moments the doctor comes behind him, placing steadying hands on his lower back.

“A few more seconds, here,” she says, and Finn is so startled by the contact he holds it for longer than he has to.

“Good job,” she tells him afterwards, and Finn tries not to feel too pleased.

-

The strange thing about Rey is that Finn has been with her a far, far shorter period of time then they’ve actually been apart. And still, sometimes, he’ll see something that will remind him of her, or he’ll see a picture of her, or he’ll talk to her on the phone, and his stomach will twist in a deep ache of longing. He misses her. Despite barely knowing her.

He feels this twist when Rey slides into the picture on his tablet (Poe’s tablet, actually, but he left it here for Finn to use, so its essentially his). Her eyes are wide, her face red; she’s panting. “Hey, Finn!” she says, and flops down on the floor. 

“Hey,” Finn says easily, smiling as he sees Luke hand Rey a glass of water, which she gulps, all at once, without pausing.

“Sorry,” she says, as she eases into a stretch. Finn recognizes it; it’s one of the ones he’s tried in physio, one of the ones the therapist says he may be able to complete on his own, someday. “Just did six miles, I’m a bit out of breath.”

“No worries,” Finn says. “How are things there?”

They chat for a while; it’s a bit more topical than most of their conversations, but Luke is in the room, and while Finn may trust Rey he doesn’t trust her mentor just yet.

“Oh!” Rey says suddenly, just as they are about to hang up. She’s shifted, now, and is sitting cross-legged, eating a bowl of fruit. “I meant to tell you - I’m coming back soon!”

Something lurches in Finn’s chest. “Soon? When, soon?”

“Like, a couple months!” Rey is beaming widely, and Finn can’t help the smile that splits his own cheeks. He thinks of Rey and her soft hugs and her sincerity; he can’t wait to have her back on base. He glances down at his legs; will he be able to walk by then?

“That’s great, Rey!” Finn says, channeling all of his enthusiasm into the words. Rey seems to believe it, because she just beams at him for a moment.

“Well, I better get going,” she says finally, setting aside her empty bowl. “Give my love to BB-8. I’ll see you soon!”

“See you soon,” Finn says, still smiling as the screen goes black. Then he sighs, tossing it aside, and looks at his legs under the blanket. A couple months, huh.

(He thinks of Rey running laps on her watery planet. He thinks of Rey and her lightsaber, in the thick of battle. He thinks of Rey, Chewie at her back, Poe in the sky, and Finn - nowhere, in medbay, on the sidelines, not helping. He thinks of the light in Poe’s quarters, the rush of people when he opened the door.  _Surprise._ He thinks of the contrast.)

“Hey, uh - excuse me?” The med-droid that usually idles in the corner of his room jerks to life, rolling over. “Um - is it possible to schedule extra therapy sessions?”

**_-_ **

(Finn schedules extra therapy sessions. The first time he shows up to one, the doctor’s eyes brighten in surprise, and she double-checks her schedule. “It’s not Tuesday,” she says, scanning the logs. “I thought the droids just made a mistake.” A medbot beeps indignantly in the corner.

She tells Finn to have hope. She tells Finn to believe. They graduate to harder exercises, but they’re still just stretches. She tries to have him move a leg, once. It doesn’t work. She tells him not to give up. She tells him anything is possible.

He believes her.)

-

Twelve weeks after Finn wakes up, and nine weeks before Rey is set to come home, Poe comes to visit him on the usual Wednesday. He doesn’t have food or a game this time; just himself, looking tired, weary. Worse for the wear than he was on Sunday.

“Hey,” Finn murmurs when he sees him. Poe’s mouth quirks, almost despite himself.

“Hey,” he says back, and groans as he sinks into the chair beside Finn’s bed. “Fuck, am I tired.”

“Did something happen?”

Poe sighs, eyes sliding shut as he rests his head on the back of his chair. “Nothing in particular, just - a lot of training. There’s a planet we really need to survey, but we can’t quite get the clearance to visit it’s just - ” He sighs. “The General’s really cracking down, you know.”

Finn hesitates for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Are you sure you want to be here, right now? Because, like, obviously I like having you here but you shouldn’t feel obligated to come, if you’re tired -“

“Hey, no, hey.” Poe sits up, now suddenly more awake, concern creasing his forehead. “I’m tired. But I want to be here, okay? I like hanging out with you. It’s - I like hanging out with you.”

Finn considers Poe’s expression - the wide eyes, the tightness of his jaw, the sincerity - before he nods. “Okay. But you’re not going to sit in that chair for four hours if you’re exhausted.” Finn slides over to the far edge of his med-bed, and picks up his legs, one-by-one, moving them with him. (He doesn’t look at Poe’s expression when he does this; he doesn’t need to see the surprise, the aversion, the thinly-veiled disgust.) “You can sit up here, by me.” He pats the lumpy mattress to his right.

For a moment, Poe hesitates. “You sure?” he asks, and Finn nods immediately.

“Of course.”

There’s another beat of silence and then Poe is dragging himself out of his chair, kicking off his shoes and sliding under the blankets next to Finn. Finn can see Poe’s leg is almost touching his. He wishes he could feel it; could feel the heat.

“Oh, god,” Poe says as he sinks back into the - frankly, crappy - pillows. “I love beds. Beds are the best.”

Finn smiles a little bit, though he feels guilty. If he could walk, Poe could be in his own bed, downstairs in the pilots quarters, because Finn could be there with him. He brushes the feeling aside.  _Soon enough,_ he thinks.

“So how was your day?” Finn asks. Poe mumbles his way through an explanation, and actually makes it halfway through a story about Kare and her droid - who apparently has a thing for Emily’s droid - before he drifts off, head falling onto Finn’s shoulder.

His breath is warm against Finn’s neck. Maybe if it were someone else, that would be gross, but it’s Poe, so it just feels nice. His hair is soft. His face is slack.

Finn sighs and rests his head back against his pillows. He hadn’t felt tired before, but he feels sleepy now, his limbs soft and loose. He reaches over, flicking off the lights in the room, then pulls up the blankets over Poe and him. Just before he falls asleep, he reaches out to twine his and Poe’s fingers together, a loose handhold reminiscent of the grip Poe had had on him when Finn first woke up.

He falls asleep.

-

(Sometimes Finn dreams he is back in the Millennium Falcon, with Rey, shooting at the assailants following them. Sometimes, there are X-wings around them, too, all piloted by the same person, the same visage a dozen times over. No matter how many times Finn fires, he never hits him. Just the enemy, whose planes go up in balls of blue-green flame, and he whoops, and somewhere, he hears Poe whooping too.)

-

Time - passes. Finn throws himself into physical therapy with a vigor he’s never felt before, because -  _because._ He wants his legs back. He wants to  _feel_ again. He wants to do the things he can’t do now: he wants to run, and he wants to fight, but more importantly, he wants to see Rey, and he wants to hug her, and he wants to go with her on the Millennium Falcon, out into the galaxy, and be something more than dead weight. He wants to be useful. He wants to be whole.

There are moments where he feels dead inside despite this: moments where he thinks,  _what’s the point,_ and wants to snap at the medbots and say,  _you don’t get it, you’ll never get it, you break and they fix you right up, no problem._ But he thinks of Rey, and he thinks of Poe, and he stops, because. Because.

Because he wants to walk into Poe Dameron’s room with his own two feet and grab him and hug him tight, for as long as possible, until Poe wriggles free. Because he wants Poe to sleep in his own bed. Because he wants Poe to not have to visit him, anymore; because he wants Poe to have all of his time back, whole, not split like a sectioned orange. Because he wants Poe to see him like he sees Jess or Emily or Snap, someone to be friends with, someone to be useful, someone you might look at and think,  _hero._ Someone not-needy. Someone you need. A person. A whole person.

(There are some things that he wishes could be different about how Poe treats him compared to Jess or Emily. Little things, stupid thoughts, late-night cold-bed dreams. But he pushes the ideas away. It is what it is, and Finn’ll be lucky if he can get Poe to see him as a friend, a regular friend. It’ll be enough.)

-  
****

Rey calls him a month before she’s set to come home.

“Hey!” She’s as chipper as usual but unusually grainy over the tablet. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, same as usual. Sleeping, eating, doing acrobatic tricks in the circus -“

Rey laughs, but Finn can’t tell if she’s sincere. “Sounds fun,” she says, and that sounds ambiguous, too. “Hey, so I don’t have a ton of time, because we’re not actually at Luke’s right now.”

Finn raises an eyebrow. “Really? Where are you?”

Rey smiles a bit, but she looks kind of nervous. “Um - well, I’m not actually supposed to tell you? I’m sure I can talk about it once I get back, but I jut don’t think that this channel is necessarily secure enough to - “

Finn’s chest feels very heavy. He thinks,  _of course._ He forces a smile. “Of course, of course, don’t worry about it. I should have realized.”

Rey smiles a bit, again. Agreement? “Anyway, I was just calling to check in with you, and just to say that I’m traveling.” The screen shorts out for a second, and when it comes back up, Rey is grimacing. Her expression smooths quickly. “Anything you want to talk about?”

Finn thinks about Poe. He thinks about his legs. He thinks about the nightmares.

“Nah, I won’t keep you,” Finn says. He tries to grin. “I’ll see you soon, though, right?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely! I might be a few weeks later than I was anticipating, I’m not sure where Luke is taking me, but I’ll see you soon I’m sure!”

Finn has to resist the urge to bite his lip. “Okay,” he says, and Rey smiles and waves and ends the call.

_-_

“So how long do you think it’ll be before I get some feeling back into these old things?”

Finn tries not to let too much hope seep into his voice when he asks. It’s a Thursday, two weeks before Rey gets home - the extra therapy session he added to his schedule. He’s given up hope that he’ll be able to walk by the time Rey arrives, but maybe he’ll be able to at least move a leg, feel something.

Finn has asked this question before, of course, but only to the droids, who always answered with a mechanical ‘It is too soon to say for certain’. But his therapist is human, now; Finn watches her face closely as she responds.

“Well,” she says slowly. Her face is carefully blank, but her eyebrow twitches. “We just don’t know yet.”

Finn’s stomach drops a little. “What do you mean, you just don’t know yet?”

“Well,” she says again, this time turning her body away from Finn’s so he can’t see her face. “I know I told you to believe, and you have to believe. But it’s been more than three months since you’ve sustained the injury and you still have no sensation in your legs. It’s possible - well, anything is possible at this point.”

“But?” Finn’s voice cracks.

His therapist sighs, and sets down the clipboard on her desk. She leaves her hands braced there, back bent, head down. “But it’s looking very unlikely you will ever get any sensation back in your legs.”

Finn is silent for a long, stunned moment. “But you - just a few weeks ago, you said -”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I thought it was a flaw in the therapy, a flaw in the - ” She pauses, takes a deep breath, sighs. “You should still stay hopeful. But the lack of neurological process… you should prepare yourself. It’s looking increasingly likely you’ll never be able to walk again.”

Finn - breathes.

-

(That night, Finn has a dream that he’s flying again: the back of the Millennium Falcon, Rey piloting, BB-8 bumbling around somewhere in the hallway. There aren’t any enemies following them, that time, just X-wings, just a man in a sandy-red fighter’s jacket.  _Please,_ Finn hears him whisper, as he blows him out of the sky, X-wings falling one by one by one in spitting plumes of black smoke.  _Please,_ and something hits Finn from behind and he’s falling through a nonexistent window down, down, down into the wreckage.  _Please,_ and Finn looks down, and his legs are gone. There’s nothing but two bloody stumps.

_Please.)_

_-_

(The night of Poe’s birthday party, Finn’s room had felt colder than usual. It was 21:30 by the time he got back - after Poe usually left - but it still felt strange, the atmosphere foreign. Maybe because the four hours he’d been gone was the longest stretch he’d been out of the room in weeks.

He hadn’t bothered to flick on the lights when he rolled in the room, making a beeline straight for his bed. His pants got caught in his wheel when he tried to pull himself out of his chair; the harsh metal caught and tugged, and a droid rolled over to help.

“May I assist you?”

“No,” Finn grunted, trying to heave himself onto his bed with sheer power of will. 

The robot didn’t listen. It unhooked his pants.

“Sleep well,” it said, and rolled out of the room, shutting the door behind itself.

Finn sat on his bed, breathing hard, chest tight. His eyes felt warm, too large, wet.  _Useless,_ Finn thought, limp legs hanging off of the side,  _useless, useless, useless._ With shaking fingers, he pulled his legs into the bed, yanking the blanket up over himself, over his head, over his pillow.  _Useless, useless, useless,_ and Finn was quaking so hard his whole bed was moving.  _Useless,_ and he finally started crying - big, ugly sobs which reverberated around the empty room, that made his chest ache.  _Useless, useless, useless._ He buried his face in his pillow, blanket over his head, and prayed.  _Please don’t let me wake up in the morning, please just let me die, just let me die I’m so fucking useless, I’m so fucking useless, useless, useless useless -)_

_-_

(The morning after Poe and Finn had fallen asleep together - that Wednesday night where Poe was dead-tired and Finn napped so he wouldn't have to sleep alone - Finn woke up alone. No note. No message. No nothing. Just an empty bed and cold blankets.)

-

Finn - retreats. He wraps himself up in his blanket as best he can and makes a conscious effort to be less involved outside of his hospital room. It’s not much of a loss for them, anyway - he wasn’t contributing anything, just sucking resources, and he’s still sucking resources, but at least he’s not bothering them anymore. He’s just so tired of bothering them.

The first day Poe visits after the therapist tells him he’ll never get better, Finn lets him in, but stays quiet. He doesn’t tell him. He knows he should - should let him get out now, while he has the chance - but he’s too selfish. He doesn’t want Poe to leave. Instead, he lets Poe talk, and show him a new game on his datareader, and absolutely does not mention anything being wrong.

Finn doesn’t feel guilty about it. He doesn’t. Except he does and it’s building like a wave in his chest, just waiting to break, every day Poe visits just a bit worse, just a bit less control over himself, until four days later Poe shows up and the first thing Finn says, before ‘hello’ or ‘how are you doing’ or ‘you’re my best friend’ is, “They don’t think I’ll ever walk again.”

Poe freezes in his steps, and visibly seems to process the information. Finn’s heart sinks.  _There he goes,_ he thinks, and tries not to resent it. He’s not sure what he’s resenting - himself, his nurse, Poe, his fucking legs - but it’s something.

Finally Poe starts moving again. “I’m really sorry about that, buddy,” he says, almost carefully. He steps forward, setting the tablet and the box of food he’s carrying - baked goods? pie? - on the nightstand beside Finn’s bed. “How are you feeling about that?”

Finn shrugs, glances down and around and not at Poe’s face. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Is what it is, you know.”

“Well, I mean, that might be true to a degree, sure,” Poe says, carefully settling into a chair. “You’re still you regardless of whether or not you can use your legs. But -“

Finn cuts him off before he can say it. “I’m less useful like this. I know, believe me. But, I mean, unless there’s a magical exoskeleton or something that can turn me into a robot, I really don’t -“

“No, Finn, what - no, that’s not what I meant at all.” Poe’s brow is furrowed now, a type of concern in his expression that Finn hasn’t really seen before. “After all this, do you really think that’s what you’re here for? Even if you never walked again - even if you never moved a muscle again, just laid here all day and stared at the ceiling - that’d be okay. You’re not here to be a robot, Finn, we already have those.”

The medbot beeps in the corner. Both Finn and Poe ignore it - Poe too busy staring intently at Finn, Finn caught up in it, the sincerity. “I told you, you’re my friend, Finn,” Poe says. “I’m - you’re more than that, buddy. That’s why I care if you walk again, because I care about you. Of course you can live a fulfilling and happy and successful life without the use of your legs, but I know you don’t want to, so I was hoping for your sake you wouldn’t have to. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still be your friend, now, and that doesn’t mean anyone else won’t be either.”

Finn swallows. “Other than Rey you’re - you’re kind of my only friend,” Finn says. The medbot beeps again, and Finn rolls his eyes, adds, “And Roger, here.”

It’s light enough that it pulls a laugh out of Poe, breaking the tension slightly. “When did you name him?”

“I didn’t,” Finn says. “Don’t know any names, remember? Rey did it, on one of her video calls.”

Poe looks over at the bot, almost appraising. “Roger,” he says slowly. The med-bot mimics his pose, head half-cocked, almost like it’s mocking him. Poe laughs, more full-throated this time. “I like it.”

He stays a few more hours, and neither of them mention Finn’s legs again. 

-

(That night, Finn dreams he’s back in his Stormtrooper bunk, but he can’t move. His legs are frozen - icy cold, like they’re stuck in a block of ice, though they look intact, normal. There’s an alarm going off somewhere in the background, painting purple-blue light across the ceiling. Finn strains against the covers, heaving to budge his legs just the slightest bit, but it’s ineffective. Eventually, he falls back against the covers, panting, unable to continue.

Just at that moment, footsteps approach from the distance. Plastic on metal - Stormtrooper armor. Finn starts straining afresh, but he’s already exhausted, almost falling asleep where he’s laying.

Someone bends over the side of his bed. _Finn, buddy, come on, let’s get you out of here!_

Poe. Finn is too hazily exhausted to do anything but lay limp when Poe reaches over to pick him off of his mattress. He does it effortlessly, like Finn’s not a deadweight at all. He starts walking towards the exit, and Finn falls asleep in his arms - only to jolt awake in medbay.)

-

Someone knocks on Finn’s door on a Saturday.

Finn puts his tablet down. “Come in,” he says, and with every fiber of his being expects to see Poe or his therapist, Poe or his therapist, one or the other.

It’s neither.

“Hi, Jessika,” Finn says, after a long moment in which it becomes apparent to both of them that he’s completely dumbfounded by her presence. She winces, a bit, almost in acknowledgement, as she slips into the room.

“Hey, Finn,” she says. “Sorry I haven’t been by lately.” She’s not quite avoiding his eyes, but she’s not looking at him head-on, either.

Finn thinks of the party, the drop in and drop off, the breeze over. He thinks of himself, laying in this bunk, broken legs. Thinks,  _can you blame her?_

“No worries,” Finn says. “What’s up?”

“I just -“ she hesitates, bites her lip. “Are you doing okay?”

Finn blinks.

“I just - I realized I never asked, and Poe - has been, I don’t know, spending a lot of time up here, and obviously he’s very good friends with you! Obviously, but I just wanted to make sure that - you didn’t need anyone else to talk to.”

Finn swallows. He’s not sure what to think of this - if it’s a gesture of genuine concern, or just transitive worry about Poe. He wonders if maybe Poe said something to her. “I’m fine,” he says. He opens his mouth to say something else but can’t think of anything, so he closes it again. He shrugs a bit.

“Are you sure?” Jessika asks. “Because, I know we’re not that close, and I haven’t known you long, but I like to think we’re friends, and if you need something -“

“No, I think I’m good,” Finn says, and then, feeling daring, adds, “But I’ll let you know if that changes.” He pauses again. “Thank you, Jessika.”

She nods, smiles a bit. “Of course. Don’t thank me for being a decent person.”

 _Person._ It’s a strange phrase, almost new to Finn. He’d heard it before, of course, in the First Order, but never really applied to anyone he knew. There were soldiers, and units, and Stormtroopers, and troops, and that was it. The leaders were people, but the ants - the pawns that got crushed in battle - they never got to be individuals.

Jessika leaves ten minutes later for a poker tournament. That’s something else the First Order outlawed. Finn watches her leave and considers.

-

(Someone bends over the side of Finn's bed. _Finn, buddy, come on, let’s get you out of here!_  as Poe picks Finn up effortlessly, like he's not a deadweight at all. 

As Poe carries him towards the door, Finn realizes that he can’t feel his legs, but it’s not the lack of feeling of a broken spine. It’s more like they’re nonexistent, tingling, floating. He looks behind himself, and sees them there, like two planks, like strings attached to invisible floating balloons, drifting in the barracks.  _I see you._

Poe moves like he’s not carrying a cripple. Poe moves like nothing is wrong.)

-

Finn gets a letter from Rey two weeks before she’s set to arrive home.

_Dear Finn,_

_We’re on our way. It’s a long journey, to say the least, filled with a lot of pit-stops along the way, but I think it’ll be fun. I’m writing because video recordings don’t work well on the Falcon, and also sometimes it feels nice to write things out._

_I brought you things. Little souvenirs, really - a few stones from the cliff, a cup of water, this statue Luke gave me that I think you’d like better. It might seem silly but I feel like you need some nice things. You deserve them, at least._

_Anyway. I really miss you, Finn. I know you know this, but you’re my best friend in the galaxy, and probably one of the people I know best, because Luke’s strangely secretive and Chewie doesn’t like to talk about himself anymore. When we get back, Luke is giving me a week off to just do whatever. I want to spend it with you - just relaxing. I wanna try those donuts you told me about. If you insist, I suppose we can be helpful and do coding or research or something for the Resistance, but when I say we’re not getting out of our beds, I mean that._

_Miss you, Finn. I’ll see you soon, though. May the force be with you._

_Your friend,_

_Rey_

_A week in bed,_ Finn thinks, and thinks of a year in bed, two years, ten, a lifetime. Coding and research and letter writing and interpreting and analysis and battle plans and weapons building, weapons design, nursing, cooking, counseling, teaching - 

There’s a lot of jobs you can do without legs. Finn never thought that hard about it before.

 _Huh_ , Finn thinks, and makes a note to ask Poe for donuts.

-

(That Thursday, Poe gets sent out for a mission. All the pilots do, from what Finn can tell; it seems very short notice, very harried, as Poe sprints up to Finn’s room just as they’re leaving and says,  _Hey, mission, they finally gave us the go-ahead to survey that planet, remember, told you about it weeks ago - anyway, whole squadron’s gotta go, probably won’t be back in time for tomorrow._

 _No worries,_ Finn says, and Poe reaches forward, squeezes his hand in lieu of a hug, and dashes out the door agin.  _Good luck,_ Finn calls after him, but doesn’t say what he wants to say, which is  _don’t die on me,_ and  _be careful,_ and  _if I lost you I think I’d maybe lose myself too so don’t leave._

That night, Finn watches movies on the datareader, all movies he and Poe have watched together before, and tries to imagine Poe is here with him. He closes his eyes tight, listens to the background music, and remembers, tries to feel him. But the room is cold and he can’t hear Poe’s breathing, oddly loud even over the dialogue, and so it’s not a very good facade.)

-

Three days later, and Poe’s still not back, and Finn has started to go crazy. He snaps at Roger so much that the medbot has started actively avoiding him, and since he’s assigned to Finn and only Finn, that means shying away from him like a kicked dog shies from a boot. It doesn’t make Finn feel any better, only more sadistic, but he can’t stop himself, which makes him feel more helpless, too.

Finally -  _finally,_ Finn thinks when the General shows up at his door, and then regrets thinking ten minutes later - finally they get news.

It’s not good news. Effectively, it boils down to this: they went in. They were spotted. New technology or low cloud coverage or a mistake on the part of the pilots, it doesn’t matter. They were spotted, and they were targeted, and Poe, leader-of-the-squadron-Poe, these-people-are-my-responsibility-Poe, stupid-hero-Poe,  _Finn’s_ Poe, stayed back to try to hold off the gunners long enough for the rest of the fleet to get into hyperdrive. He succeeded, and even managed to blast off himself, but not before getting hit and shattering his plane enough that Jessika had to fish him out of the wreckage.

He hasn’t woken up since.

 _Okay,_ Finn tells himself.  _Okay. Do not panic._ Except he’s already panicking, so clearly that he’s gone white-knuckled on his fucking bedsheets, and he’s not sure if he’s breathing right. He’s pretty sure he’s not breathing right.

“Don’t panic, Finn, okay?” the General says, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Finn thinks hysterically,  _can’t you see I’m trying?_ “Poe is going to be fine. Somehow, he managed to escape the worst of the injuries. Jess and Bastian are already heading out to pick up some more bacta gel. He’ll be fine, totally fine.”

 _Fine_ , Finn repeats to himself,  _fine_.

“Would you like to go down to see him?” 

Finn nods immediately, no hesitation, and the General smiles, something wistful in her eyes. “Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s never as bad as you think.”

Finn thinks of Poe, cut up and bloodied, dripping, sagging, falling apart at the seams, broken Poe, hurt Poe, Poe crying, Poe screaming, Poe pulled out of the wreckage with half the plane embedded under his skin - 

Finn prays she’s right.

-

_(Dear Finn,_

_People are better than no people.)_

**-**  
****

Poe’s hospital room is loud. There are machines, everywhere, beeping, and medbots scattered across the room, and people talking in nearby rooms, and all of it bounces off of the empty walls and magnifies, until it makes Finn want to cover his ears. He doesn’t.

(Snap and Lek are in their own hospital rooms, banged up more by the descent than anything, and Bastian and Jess are off getting bacta; and so although there’s no shortage of people who care if Poe wakes, they’re all off doing something else, preparing for future battles, fighting wars, and Finn is here, alone.)

Finn feels like this a dream he’s had, some sort of nightmare, foggy on the edges; in a minute, he’ll wake, and everything will become less hazy, and he’ll think  _silly me. Of course that wouldn’t happen. It could never._

But here he is, and here they are, in this mirror universe where Poe is the one in the bed, and Finn is at his side, perched just a bit too low to see him properly, falling into orbit around him, like everything else in his room: moving in circles, perpetually focused on the sleeping face on the pillow.

 _Oh,_ Finn thinks.  _Oh._ How did he not see this before?

And then Poe is blinking awake, and his eyes are still brown, warm brown, warm like pizza and card games and the calluses on his hand, and Finn thinks,  _Oh,_ and it’s a different sort of realization.

Everything seems to shift, a single breath and a cracking rib, and it resettles, and Finn is somewhere new.

Oh.

“Finn? Buddy? That you?” Poe blinking, slow and heavy, like he can’t quite see right. He moves to lift his arm, and Finn sees the resulting wince.

“It’s okay,” Finn says, and it feels like deja vu, like he’s playing the wrong role in this movie but also the exact right one. “Everything’s okay.”

“How are the others? How long have I been out?”

Finn has to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Everyone else is fine,” he says. “You held them off long enough, everyone was able to go into hyperdrive. When they hit you, you were already moving, so you made it through before the plane totally shut down.” Finn stops, clears his throat, tries not to think too hard.  _Poe, in space, and falling, and stars around him like lampshades, and falling._ “You’ve been out a while.”

“How bad?” Poe asks. He shifts a bit, and winces again, stiff around the ribs. Finn reaches forward, where Poe can’t see, and presses the button for pain meds.

“You were lucky,” Finn says honestly. He hates that, that he has to say that, that in any universe Poe’s survival is  _luck_ and not a god-given right, but it’s true. “Bad cut to your thigh, and a pierced lung, and a lot of bumps and bruises and burns, but otherwise, you should be fine. They patched you up pretty good already, and they’re just waiting for the next round of bacta to get in before they can speed up the process.”

“That’s - that’s good,” Poe says, and he’s started slurring, his eyelids dropping shut.  _The morphine’s working,_ Finn thinks, and presses the button one more time to be safe.

“Yeah, yeah it is.” Finn reaches out and takes Poe’s hand in his, squeezes it firmly. For a second, it makes something like the start of a smile curl over Poe’s lips.  _God,_ Finn thinks.  _Look at that._

“It’s really great,” Finn says to Poe, and Poe sleeps.

-

(Poe, in space, and falling, and stars around him like lampshades, and falling.

Jess tells Finn this story, and Finn thinks,  _I want to be there next time.)_

_-_

Poe wakes again the next morning. The medbots changed out the meds overnight, replacing the heavy pull of the morphine with something less detrimental to consciousness, so Poe is more coherent this time.

“Hey, Finn,” he says, and smiles down at him. Finn can’t help but grin back up. “You haven’t been here all night, have you?”

“Well,” Finn says, and doesn’t say anything else, because he doesn’t like lying and he has been here all night, sleeping on and off, alternating between drifting back in his chair and watching the monitors with bated breath for Poe’s heart to stop.

Poe chuckles, soft. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, but he doesn’t sound particularly convinced. “Can’t be good for your back.”

Finn waves a hand. “Not much is good for my back,” he says, “but I can’t let it stop me, can it?” He’s surprised, almost, at how little this conversation is bothering him.

Poe seems surprised too. “Good for you, buddy,” he says, and Finn leans forward, grabs it hand, squeezes it. He looks straight into Poe’s eyes.

“Poe,” he says, and his heart is beating too fast, but he feels calm, somehow, above that, like a superseding thought process has kicked in and just said,  _go._ “I can’t let my legs stop me from doing what I want to do.”

“Yeah?” Poe says, and licks his lips, a small flick of the tongue that seems unconscious but makes Finn want to kiss him even more. “Like what?”

“Like this,” Finn says, and lifts Poe’s hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to the back of it. He can feel Poe’s pulse, thin and fast, beneath his thumb, can hear it on the monitors. Excitement or fear, and Finn’s not sure which.

“Poe,” he says, and looks Poe straight in the eye, and there’s something, there, something blooming, and Finn’s chest is aching like an earthquake in reverse, “If I asked you on a date, what would you say?”

Poe smiles, slow and wide. “I think I’d say, haven’t we been going on dates for months already?”

Finn lets himself grin, then, too. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he says, using his free hand to pull himself closer to Poe’s beside. “So I guess, then, what I want to say is, I think I love you.”

“That’s good,” Poe says, and Finn feels it, the pull of the orbit, the gravity, sees it in the curve of Poe’s lips. “Because I’m definitely in love with you.”

“Okay, I have to kiss you now,” Finn says, but he’s too far down, too short and Poe can’t move, broken ribs and broken lungs, and Finn lets go of Poe’s hand to pull himself up out of his chair and onto the edge of Poe’s hospital bed, jostling Poe's good leg aside as Poe laughs like he can’t contain himself, like he can’t quite believe this is happening.

“You sure about this?” Poe asks, as Finn leans in, and Finn rolls his eyes, huffs.

“I just dragged myself out of a wheelchair all the way up here, and that’s what you want to ask me, am I sure?” he says, and then kisses him.

He’s warm. That’s what he tastes like, if Finn had to say something - he’d say warmth, and spit, and something stale, because Poe’s been passed out for three days, and it doesn’t matter.  _God,_ Finn thinks, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, and they sit there, in the sunlight, god knows how long.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Poe says, when Finn finally pulls back, and Finn smiles, rests his forehead against Poe’s.

“So am I,” he says honestly.

-

(That afternoon, once Poe has fallen back asleep again, and Finn has been reliably assured by no less than three medbots that he won’t wake for another six hours at  _least,_ Finn goes back to his room to sleep. When Finn pulls himself out of his wheelchair on to his bed, Roger beeps and trills forward, going to take the chair from him. Going to take it back, probably: to the medbay, or the physio wing, or wherever else they keep spares.

“Actually,” Finn says, his grip tight around the arm of the chair. “Can I keep this?”)

-

Rey returns home. She’s like a tall glass of salt water, stepping off that plane; Finn watches from the wings of the runway as she emerges from the cockpit, the brightness of her like an abstract of a person, her exuberant energy. She dashes straight to him, practically climbs into his lap in her rush to hug him.

“Finn! How are you!” and he can barely get a word in before she’s gushing about Luke Skywalker, and her training, and the incredible seas hidden out in the universe. Finn nods and lets her talk, long minutes passing slow. Behind her, the forest stretches out, green and infinite.

“Anyway, anyway,” she says finally, still bouncing on her toes. “Enough about me, what about you? How’s life been? It feels like it’s been ages since we last talked - how’s Poe?”

“Well,” Finn says, and thinks about their twin hospital rooms, the way the light filters through Poe’s dark hair, the warmth of his skin under Finn’s lips. “There are a few things you missed.”

**-**

(Sometimes Finn dreams of running. Sometimes he dreams of flying. Sometimes he doesn’t dream at all. When he can’t sleep, sometimes he sits in his bed and watches the night crew scurry outside the window. Sometimes he hates himself, and his legs, and his existence.

Other times, he pulls himself into his wheelchair, one leg at a time, and goes to visit Poe. Usually he doesn’t wake him; instead, he sits by his bedside, not touching, and watches the movement of Poe’s chest. In, and his diaphragm contracts; out, and it relaxes. Finn matches his breathing to Poe’s, counting, one, two, seventeen, until the buzz in his chest calms, and his legs don’t feel so heavy.) 

**-**

“I think you’ve hit your quota from the day,” Poe observes from the corner. He’s reading, some pilots manual or engineering article, and he regards Finn wryly from over the datareader.

“Just a bit more,” Finn huffs, stretching again towards his toes, once more, twice more.

Poe rolls his eyes, tossing down his book and standing. “No, that’s enough,” he says, and bends beside Finn to kiss him. Finn presses one palm against Poe’s jaw, the other against his stomach, and lets himself relax.

_Home._

Poe pulls back a moment later, grinning, one hand cupping the back of Finn’s neck. “Still want to overwork yourself? Because if so, I can think of better ways to do it than physio,” and he reaches down to lift Finn by the waist. Finn laughs and lets him, leveraging himself off Poe’s shoulders. Their room is warm and yellow and Poe tosses him down onto their bed, soft and white, and Finn thinks of the cold of the Star Destroyer, the burn of the lightsaber on his back, and smiles up at Poe.

“Is that so?” he asks, but it comes off like laughter, and Poe leans down, bites a crescent over his Adam’s apple. Moon.

“That’s so,” Poe says, and he kisses him again, and he kisses him again, and he kisses him, and its hard and soft and warm and cold and Finn is drifting. Finn is solid. Finn is home.

-

His toes twitch.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from pools by glass animals
> 
> constructive criticism for anything is always appreciated. in regards to any errors in portraying or describing paralyzation, please accept my utmost apologies and please point those errors out to me immediately so i can fix them. also, i’m sure this doesn’t fit in 100% with the full canon, though I did my best to match major details. if you see any errors in that department, also feel free to point them out - depending on relevance to/impact on the story, i may or may not fix them.
> 
> lastly, please know that Finn's commentary on paralyzation and ableism does not in any way reflect my own views on the matter. his views and the things he expresses are representative of his mindset at the time and what he is struggling with.
> 
> (fic edited & updated sep. 10, 2017)


End file.
